 |
In the summer of 1960, young Sally is coming to terms with the changes that she is going through as she grows into adulthood. When a lazy Sunday morning game of hopscotch results in a chance encounter with a teenage boy from out of town, Sally is awakened to ideas and desires that leave her reeling. Reined in by her religious grandmother, Sally is at odds with what she thinks to be natural and the reputation of being a girl that's "easy" or "puts out." Through various phases of their lives, Sally and Todd's relationship blooms and grows in tempestuous ways, threatening to tear them apart one way or the other. However, their link remains strong in a decade as challenging as the circumstances of their love.
Chock-full of teenage melodrama and the peaks of hormonal, emotional distress, this story is full of salacious details and scandal that drives the story forward and dares the reader to look away. The author brings to light the double standard facing sex-positive males and females, how society treats them differently, and how far the consequences of a lifestyle like that can go. But at its heart, this is still a story about kids in love, making mistakes along the way but sharing that unmatched devotion of the heart's first love. Sally's behavior has her being pulled in a different direction from everyone in her social circle, making her plenty of enemies and placing her constantly in the middle of a smalltown storm of rumors. There's more here than just the dirty details of kids in love, though, and the reader should expect to have their heartstrings pulled on more than one occasion as they work toward the book's powerful conclusion.